Intel Z68 chipset + 2500k -- best mobo?

[Andrew Young]

So it gets to the point you finally have to upgrade, i've practically sold out my old rig in parts and am starting from scratch.......except my casing Gigabyte iSolo 210.

This is my next rig...
Corsair TX 750w v2
Core i5 2500k
RipJaws F3-12800CL7D-4GBRM
Samsung Spinpoint 1tb

Mobo
Gigabyte GA-Z68X-UD3H-B3 or ASUS P8Z68-V

Graphics: Stock intel for now(yeah, already broke).......hoping to crossfire 6870s soon though!

Any sugestions of a better setup for around 1000$ budget plus which mobo is better Asus or Gigabyte......i seem to think they're almost identical, (goin for the cheaper option)

 

[dividebyzero]

Probably not a lot of difference between the two boards. It comes doen to what your priorities are. I would base the choice on what is likely important to you:

The Asus board has the better GbLAN (Intel) and the UEFI interface (BIOS)
The Gigabyte board has some better connectivity (the full four SATA 6Gb ports) and a slightly better audio codec (889).

Apart from that, overall performance should be very similar since most of the features are reliant upon the CPU. Layout on both boards is pretty good, and expansion slot availability once you get your CFX graphics up and running would be identical (all P67/Z68 boards that feature a PCIe x4 or x16 @ 4 lanes will default automatically to x1 operation once you plug anything into a USB3.0 port or plug in a PCIe x1 card (i.e. sound card, tuner card etc.)